Slater wins Troy mayoral election

Slater, who was appointed mayor after Janice Daniels was recalled during the November election, was narrowly elected to serve the remainder of Daniels’ term, defeating challenger Marty Knollenberg by 573 votes.

Slater earned 6,393 votes — just more than 50 percent. Knollenberg received 5,820 votes, while third-place candidate Scott T. Welborn received just 215 votes. David Elsas received 170 votes, followed by Faris S. Alami with 76 and Jon Desjardins with 12.

“I’m very humbled, quite honestly, to have been elected mayor of Troy,” Slater said.

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“It’s the greatest city in Michigan. “I’m so proud to be able to represent this city and be a part of a great team on city council and continue to move our city forward and do what’s best for our residents and businesses.”

Slater’s term will end in November 2015, bringing some stability to a seat that has been in question nearly since the day Daniels took over in late 2011.

“It’s such a great feeling that it’s even hard to describe, because this city is so great, and it deserves to have some calm,” Slater said.

“It deserves to have some civility. It deserves to have respect, and I’m going to try to do everything in my power to make sure we bring the city council and the city back together and continue to move forward for this city, for the residents and for the businesses.”

Slater was thrilled to have won the election.

“It’s a happy night, to be honest with you,” he said.

“It’s a very happy night. It’s been some extremely hard work and so many people are responsible for this. It’s not me.”

Knollenberg would likely agree that Slater’s campaign members played a key role in his election.

“It’s all about getting the people to turn out, and Mr. Slater got his people to turn out better than I did,” Knollenberg said.

“Voter turnout was much higher than I had anticipated. It was higher than it was in November 2011 (when Daniels was elected). That, for a special election, was unusual. We were not predicting that, and they obviously got the message out to those voters.”

Knollenberg said it’s difficult to predict what will happen in a special election.

“You just don’t know who’s going to vote,” he said.

“I wish him the best. He’s got his hands full with the transit center issue. My message of unifying the community and re-energizing the community is something Troy needs. There’s been so much divisiveness in Troy the last several years.

“I’ll work with the current mayor and hopefully the city will unify itself.”

Contact Dave Phillips at 248-745-4631 or dave.phillips@oakpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @dave_phillips1.